EU-DIGEST

Labels: Dow Chemical, Genetically Modified Food, Monsanto

Labels: Food, Genetically Modified Food, Inc., Oscars

Labels: Bulgaria, EU, Genetically Modified Food, Monsanto

GM crops could lead to 'disaster': Prince Charles

The widespread use and development of genetically modified crops could lead to "the biggest disaster environmentally of all time," Prince Charles said Wednesday in an interview with a British newspaper. New experiments with GM crops could worsen food-supply problems, the heir to the British throne told the Daily Telegraph. "What we should be talking about is food security, not food production — that is what matters, and that is what people will not understand," he said. "And if they think it's somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another, then again, count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time."

Note EU-Digest: The EU parliament holds similar views on genetically modified crops as Prince Charles but is constantly being bombarded by lobbyists from giant multi-national chemical corporations like Monsanto to change their position on this issue. We can only hope they won't eventually cave in under the pressure.

Labels: EU, Genetically Modified Food

EU - Outrage at plans to lift USA 'chlorine chicken' ban

Members of Parliament from all political horizons have reacted with fury to a Commission proposal yesterday (28 May) to re-allow imports of poultry rinsed with chemicals, stemming mainly from the United States.MEPs, meeting in Parliament's Environment Committee, were incensed by the decision, which they say contradicts Community food production standards. "The chlorination of chicken intended for human consumption is not acceptable for the EU […] Such food production methods are at variance with the relevant Community standards, and threatening to the EU's entire set of food production standards and rules," states an EP press release. If approved, the proposal would effectively lift an 11-year ban on US poultry, which are generally treated with these processes.

The US has been pushing for the ban to be lifted for years but to no avail. However, the issue was recently pinpointed as a top priority in the new "Transatlantic Economic Council" process, which aims to remove remaining regulatory obstacles hampering trade and investment between the two economic giants.

France is leading the opposition to the plans, saying the move would frustrate efforts to reduce bacterial infection rates, such as salmonella, in Europe. Many other European governments are fiercely opposed to any form of compromise on food safety standards, which in the EU are among the highest in the world.

Labels: EU, Food Standards, Genetically Modified Food, Poultry

France defends ban on strain of GM corn- EU must not let itself be intimidated by Anglo-American agribusiness/biotechnology giants

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Saturday defended banning a strain of GM corn, as a high-profile activist ended a hunger strike in response and farmers complained politics had trumped science. "It does not mean that France does not participate in GMO research. It does not mean that there will not be GMOs in the future," Sarkozy said at a meeting of his Union for a Popular Movement party (UMP), referring to genetically modified organisms. "It simply means that with the principle of precaution at stake, I am making a major political decision to carry our country to the forefront of the debate on the environment."

Opponents of GMOs -- a fiercely contested issue in Europe -- welcomed the French government's decision, announced late Friday, to invoke a European Union procedure to bar the Monsanto 810 maize. France's Provisional High Authority on GM Organisms on Wednesday pointed to what it described as "a certain number of new scientific facts relating to a negative impact on flora and fauna". Chairman Jean-Francois Le Grand, who also holds a seat in the Senate, said evidence had emerged that Mon 810 had an effect on insects, a species of earthworm and micro-organisms. There was also concern that wind-born pollen from Mon 810 could travel further than previously thought, possibly hundreds of miles (kilometres), said Le Grand.

Note EU-Digest: This is positive action by France's President Sarkozy, as a first step to ban all genetically manipulated foods and agricultural products in the EU. Research has shown the dangers of these manipulated products, like the Monsanto 810 Maize, to the environment and possibly also humans. Introducing foreign DNA into plants to create genetically modified organisms is also not without risks. London Institute of Science and Society chief biologist, Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, says the process is imprecise. "It is uncontrollable and unreliable, and typically ends up damaging and scrambling the host genome with entirely unpredictable consequences that might unleash a deadly un-recallable Andromeda Strain". It has also been reported that there are indications that genetically manipulated agricultural food products are alarmingly increasing childhood food allergies.

In the U.S. 90 percent of the soybean crop, 85 percent of cotton and 50 percent of field corn are bio-engineered or genetically manipulated organisms (GMO). Worldwide, 60 percent of soybeans and 28 percent of cotton are GMO varieties. Monsanto and other GMO giants got unregulated free rein in the 1980s and especially after George Bush became president in 1989. His administration opened "the GMO Pandora's Box" in such a way that no "unnecessary regulations" would hamper them. Thereafter, not one single new regulatory law governing biotech or GMO products was passed in the US, despite all the risks and possible dangers to health."

This issue deserves far more scrutiny in the EU than it has been getting and the EU must not let itself be intimidated and overruled by well funded Anglo-American agribusiness/biotechnology giants public relations campaigns and pressure groups.

Labels: EU, France, Genetically Modified Food

EU blocks approval of genetically modified crops

European Union governments blocked approval Wednesday of a genetically modified potato made by BASF and three corn varieties developed by Monsanto.The opposition by health regulators from some countries prevents fast-track approval of the Amflora potato from BASF for animal feed and the Monsanto corn types for feed and food. The European Commission, the 27-nation EU's executive arm, must now ask government ministers to give their verdict in a step that will add months to a process that the United States says is too slow.

Note EU-Digest : who cares what the US says. Genetically modified food should not be allowed into the EU, regardless if Monsanto, the world's largest seed producer, says that its loss had widened in its fiscal fourth quarter and that earnings in 2008 might rise less than analysts estimated. Europe must not buckle under the pressure of large corporations, especially when it is in reference to genetically modified foods.

Labels: EU, Genetically Modified Food, Monsnto